User blog:Zenki7/Zenki-Sama's guide on making Manga references

This is how I work when I make references for our recent translations related to the Japanese Kishin Douji Zenki manga! :3

I decided to put it here, cause some things are just way too funny to not to share them. XD

Why are you handling the manga very carefully, Zenki?
I'm always handling the Japanese manga volumes very carefully, because they are sacred to Seme and she would probably get really mad at me, if I didn't. Luckily, I don't need to do this with the Chinese manga volumes, cause it's a bunch of scans in our folder. Of cause, Seme also wants me to handle the files carefully, but these have backups! You can't make backups of a physical manga, which makes the Japanese manga volumes so much more delicate... ^^'

Part 1 - Preparing references

 * 1) looks up, what info he wants to reference for the wiki
 * 2) places links to the Chinese manga page scans, which we have in our folder, into the translation folder's "China" subfolder
 * 3) uses Seme's calculation formula, to calculate the correct pages in the Japanese manga and renames the links accordingly

Part 2 - Get manga and mobile phone

 * 1) washes hands to not make manga volumes dirty later on
 * 2) gets a clean towel
 * 3) carefully places clean towel on the bed or the table
 * 4) carefully opens bookcase, so he doesn't damage any manga or drawings inside it
 * 5) very carefully takes one or more Kishin Douji Zenki manga from the stack of twelve
 * 6) very carefully places it or them on one side of the clean towel
 * 7) very carefully takes manga volume for reference from the smaller stack and places it on the other side of the clean towel
 * 8) gets mobile phone to make photographs
 * 9) makes sure, that mobile phone is clean too and cleans both mobile phone and washes hands again
 * 10) places mobile phone beside the place, where he put the manga

Part 3 - Make bad photographs and get angry

 * 1) looks at the notes he prepared in part 1
 * 2) takes mobile phone and opens the camera app
 * 3) very carefully opens manga volume and searches for the page he noted down
 * 4) very carefully holds manga volume page open with left hand, so he doesn't damage anything
 * 5) looks closely through phone camera, so he makes good photographs to even capture small details to get the Furigana and Kanji right while translating later
 * 6) makes photographs of textbox from character X or panel X till he gets an image, where you can read the Japanese text as clearly as possible
 * 7) gets angry due to bad photographs multiple times
 * 8) manages to make enough good photographs for references, to call it a day

Part 4 - Repeat and move

 * 1) very carefully closes manga volume
 * 2) very carefully places manga volume back onto small stack
 * 3) repeats part 2, part 3 and steps 1-2 of part 4, till he has references from all manga volumes he placed on the towel
 * 4) very carefully picks up small manga volume stack and places it back into the bookcase
 * 5) carefully closes bookcase
 * 6) looks at mobile phone to check photographs
 * 7) gets USB-cable and plugs mobile phone into one of Semerone's desktop computer's USB-ports
 * 8) unlocks mobile phone, so he can view its folder on the computer's screen
 * 9) moves new photographs from the mobile phone's folder to the translation folder's "Japan" subfolder
 * 10) removes plug after finishing moving files and puts mobile phone away

Part 5 - More moving



 * 1) moves photographs to the Japan folder's specific Volume subfolders
 * 2) moves photographs to the specific Volume's "originals" subfolders
 * 3) rotates and crops photographs and saves them via their page numbers and a short text, that says what's going on there, in the specific Volume's subfolders

Part 6 - Preparing to translate something

 * 1) takes a break and eats some ice cream to calm down from all the stress after 6-8 hours of taking photographs and preparing new stuff for days to come
 * 2) comes back after an hour or so
 * 3) takes a deep breath and checks out prepared photograhs
 * 4) thinks about which ones he's gonna translate first
 * 5) opens notepad and starts typing
 * 6) saves "demo.txt" file with Unicode setting on the desktop

Part 7 - Noting down Furigana and Kanji
(Seme's computer has a qwerty keyboard, which doesn't feature Furigana, so I have to draw those by hand with a wiggly mouse cursor, that doesn't always work properly XD)
 * 1) looks at chosen, prepared photograph
 * 2) starts internet connection
 * 3) opens internet browser
 * 4) opens Japanese spell checking page, so he can draw Kanji and Furigana properly
 * 1) starts writing down Furigana
 * 2) copies text to "demo.txt" every once in awhile, so work doesn't get lost, if something funny happens
 * 3) finishes writing down Furigana and copying them to the file
 * 4) copies Romaji version of the Furigana text to the file, too
 * 5) starts writing down Kanji
 * 6) copies text to "demo.txt" every once in awhile, so work doesn't get lost, if something funny happens
 * 7) finishes writing down Kanji and copying them to the file
 * 8) copies Romaji version of the Kanji text to the file, too

Part 8 - Let's translate

 * 1) thinks about how to best translate the text
 * 2) compares Romaji of the Furigana and Kanji writings
 * 3) starts out by translating the inidividual Kanji and noting them down
 * 4) continues thinking about how text would make most sense in English
 * 5) makes English translation
 * 6) double checks translation multiple times, to make sure it's a good translation and not some funny mess
 * 7) has a good English translation!
 * 8) repeats steps 3-6 for German translation
 * 9) has a good German translation!
 * 10) feels proud of having prepared new content, that Semerone, Goki and himself can now post on the wiki

Part 9 - Translated scans

 * 1) goes back to "China" folder and takes scanned page
 * 2) uses image program to clear out the textboxes
 * 3) saves new raw file in the "newly translated" folder's "raw" subfolder
 * 4) adds English translation to raw file
 * 5) makes sure, the text looks good
 * 6) saves scan with English translation in the "English" subfolder
 * 7) repeats steps 4-6 for German translation
 * 8) has translated scans!

Part 10 - Wiki update

 * 1) tells others on the wiki about new translations
 * 2) waits for the right time to post new translations and scans
 * 3) posts new translations
 * 4) uploads and posts new scans
 * 5) looks after next thing in the wiki's to do-lists